Dust
by Silviael
Summary: Carlisle reflects on his long, rollercoaster ride of a life: the ugly, the bittersweet, and the beautiful. Was it all worth it, in the end? Oneshot.


**AN: Just a thought. Hope you enjoy it.**

DUST

"Carlisle," my wife called up the stairs, "would you mind getting the Christmas tree down for me? I think we put it in the attic."

I poked my head out the door of my new study, setting my book down behind me and smiling at Esme. "I'll be down with it before you know it," I promised, and took off for the attic stairs.

I loved to run. I wasn't as fast as Edward, as strong as Emmett, as graceful as Alice, as beautiful as Rosalie, as caring as Jasper, as gentle as Bella, or as loving as Esme. But I did love everything about my life. After all these years, I'd finally figured out that I didn't regret being what I was. Without my… abilities, without my immortality, I wouldn't have any of those people.

I let my eyes adjust to the dark for a spare second and took a long look around. We'd moved to this house, in the rural reaches of Africa, three months ago. Here we could be in the sun without fear of being discovered, but could travel the thirty miles into the nearest town on days Alice saw as being cloudy.

Bella had loved Africa at first sight. It reminded her of Phoenix, she'd said, with the blistering heat and dry, expansive sea of brown desert, covered only in the barest shrubs.

Esme had taken delight in renovating four houses, for each of the four couples in our family, all within two miles of one another- a minute or two of running, if we were being lazy. I looked around our attic, and my sensitive nose sniffed, the smell of new paint hitting me hard, the gold-streaked walls catching the dim twilight sun.

I slowly (for me) turned in a circle in the center of the room, taking in what was the accumulation of my life. The attic was spacious, covering our entire house. With my hearing I could hear Esme's breaths below me, a faint rising and falling.

Where would our Christmas tree be in this jungle of boxes and plastic bags?

It would almost be easier to go cut one down, except the nearest evergreen forest was scanty and already too cut, too developed; Esme wouldn't be happy unless we put up our old, slightly worn tree, with its white frost on the branches. We'd used that tree for nearly a decade now- we'd gotten it the first Christmas after Bella had been changed, as a commemoration of a new stage in our family life.

I sighed ruefully and began to smell for the strange, mixed scent of plastic-fiber and pine needles, filtering out the paint and sawdust.

It was somewhere over in the far corner. Naturally.

I walked over rapidly, wishing to see Esme's face light up as we decorated our house. There was always an unspoken competition between all our families at major holidays, for who would be the best-decorated for the occasion.

I opened a long box, marked simply as _memories. _I wondered if that would be our ornaments.

No. My hands lightly stroked the cover of one of many photo albums, gently trailing a design in the fine layer of dust. I hadn't seen these pictures for a long time. I generally looked ahead, not behind. But somehow today felt different. Maybe today was a day for remembering.

Remembering Charlie's wide smile at Bella's nineteenth birthday party. I smiled myself, seeing the picture in a new light. Charlie had given Bella everything humanly possible, even forgoing his own anger at Edward and grudgingly accepting him back, slowly but with increasing warmth. In this picture, Charlie was playfully in the middle of my son and daughter, his arms around both, his brown eyes twinkling in the lights of his kitchen.

I turned the page and saw, as if from the eyes of a stranger, the day of Bella and Edward's wedding. It was small, according to Bella's wishes, although Edward would've invited the queen of England herself if Bella had wanted her there. Edward had been… not ecstatic, that was too rough, too common a word, that Bella had married him. He'd been euphoric, rapturous, starry-eyed. Bella had blushed all day long at insinuations from that silly Jessica girl, and from Rosalie and Alice's teases.

The wedding night had changed Bella's life forever, and not in the normal human mating way. Bella had been changed, despite Edward's pleas that she rethink her decision. She'd been more stubborn than I'd ever seen her. I stayed cautiously for the first minutes of the transformation, then had left. It was too personal, too grieving, to watch Edward heave dry sobs as Bella screamed and cried.

I was the only one who had seen Charlie's tears after the wedding was over, when he came to me and whispered, "Something's going to change, isn't it?" I'd only been able to stare at him silently, the words of denial and reassurance caught in my throat. Charlie had never seen Bella alive again.

Now the sparkle was gone from his warm eyes; lines were permanently etched in his forehead, and his mouth drew down in a pucker. But Renee and Phil had convinced him to move to Jacksonville, to stay near them, so he wasn't lonely and he wasn't reminded of Bella at every corner of the house.

Turning another page, I saw Edward and Bella's honeymoon in Europe. They'd stayed firmly away from Volterra, although Bella had protested that she wasn't scared of the Volturi. Edward had seen through her and steered clear of Italy entirely.

I picked up that album and softly set it aside, reaching for the oldest. Inside it contained a portrait of my parents, and a painting of the place where I grew up. There were black-and-white photographs of my Esme and me, when the photography business was only beginning to get its boost. Alice and Jasper, Rosalie and Emmett, all had their place in old, yellowed pictures, documenting centuries of living. Who needed a history book when we had our own histories to contend with?

Jasper had taken a picture in an old-timey photography shop on a boardwalk in Virginia, dressed as a Civil War soldier. He'd seen a grim irony in it and had insisted on it. Alice had teased him about it later, saying how handsome and mature he looked- for once.

Jasper had commented after that night that the best part of arguing was the making up.

The next album was full to the brim of Rosalie and Emmett's weddings. A fashion mogul would pay millions for this book; it illustrated how fashion had changed over the last decades. In their first picture, Rosalie was wearing a long lacy number with a hoop skirt and long sheer sleeves. In the most recent, three years ago, she wore a daring dress with a front slit up to her high thigh and a deep V-neck. Bella had been the maid of honor, to her own surprise.

I stared at the empty, consuming dust that saturated my hands now. With a shiver I realized what was bothering me about dust: it was so similar to ashes. They were both remnants of neglect. When a soul leaves a body; when a life leaves something behind.

One day, I'd be ashes, I'd be dust. I'd be a hollow remembrance.

I sat, rigid, caught in my turmoil. Was it right to doom Esme to this? To the uncertainty of never knowing if all our struggles will be in vain?

What if? What if we abstain, and try, and do our best to deal with what we were given, but what if it isn't good enough? I know there is a God. I know it when I look at Esme's smile, or when I see Rose studying herself critically. I know it when I hear Edward play the piano, and see Emmett wrestling with Bella, her giggling like music.

I know it every day in the sunrise, in the twilight, in the moon. But what if I'm not good enough for that God?

Doubts ran like a torrent over me; I sat back and let them wash over my body, over my brain. This happened every once in a while, whenever something truly amazing happened: I'd be stricken with fear that we were not doing it right. If it was just myself, I wouldn't be so worried. But for my family… I had to lead them. They believed that I knew what to do and sometimes I did. Did we have souls? I think so, but how can I know? Looking at these photographs, with their bittersweet resonance, how can I let go of my fears?

I heard light footsteps behind me and the attic door opened, a ray of piercing light falling on my skin. The night had long fallen as I reminisced and wondered. Esme sat next to me, putting her head on my shoulder and rubbing my back.

"It will be okay," she murmured, stroking the back of my hand, and coming away with the dust I'd handled.

I looked down at her, searching her eyes for the truth, and found it again. I took a deep breath and smiled. Esme was the answer. Esme was the reason I found the courage to shake off the dust that clouded me time after time. Esme…

She looked at me, worried. "Thinking again?" she whispered, and I nodded carefully. "About what?"

I hesitated for what seemed like forever, then smiled again, this time in earnest. "Just how much I love you."

**AN: Don't you love oneshots? I know I do. Know what I also love? Reviews!**


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